Part 1

“It doesn’t hit the mark,” Bob the speechwriter said. “It took ten different ways to say it before the message finally hit home.”

“It does a good job of saying why Coakley shouldn’t win, but it doesn’t say why you should,” Jack the communications director told him. “You need to speak clearly to your purpose and specifically to your motivations if you want to win the race.”

It was a full week before Stephan’s speech at the barbeque, a speech to be delivered to an audience that included top party representatives; everyone on his team agreed the speech would be crucial. With a little more than six weeks left until the primary, the question of why he was running had not been answered. Stephan knew his staff was right, he needed to tell his voters why he should be their Senator before they would trust him enough to elect him to represent them to the country in Washington.

Two days later, he brought his media and messaging team to his Santa Cruz beach house: Bob, Jack, Fa, Lynn, and Eliot. It was modest next to some of those CEOs’ mansions with the full-sized movie theaters, tennis courts, and olympic-sized pools, but it was nice: Stephan especially loved the seclusion and often took weekend trips here to be alone and work. He had purposefully decorated it with Eames furniture to give it a functional and simple style. When he visited his friends, he saw extravagant art by the likes of John Chamberlain, cars smashed and joined together in ways designed to be ostentatious and to reveal waste that only excess could afford.

Stephan preferred instead minimalist art designed to focus the attention back on the viewer, like Dan Flavin’s light displays. By walking through it, the viewer cast unique shadows that changed the rest of the work and became a part of it.

His Santa Cruz house was a good place that allowed him a temporary respite from the workings of the world, and his steward Crisanto and Crisanto’s wife Reyna took good care of the place in his absence.

As usual, there were nametags on everyone’s chest pocket. He could normally recognize people by their voice. But this was urgent, and he had no time to waste waiting for his staff to speak before addressing them. They had decided that no one would leave the house until the speech was done. To begin with, he would write another draft, and so would Bob Krum, his main speechwriter and closest, most serious policy advisor. He secluded himself in the upstairs bedroom with three yellow legal pads and had Crisanto bring him an espresso every few hours at the press of a button. The rest of them stayed downstairs all night, setting up a writer’s room in the kitchen to help Bob rework phrases and add in ideas. They were silent, scribbling and handing pages back and forth.

Morning came. Still in his bedroom, Stephan asked Crisanto to bring down a copy of his speech, and Bob left a copy of his speech behind with the other staffers before joining Stephan upstairs for breakfast. They turned on CNN with an understanding that the speech was off the limits of conversation while they ate. When they went downstairs, they asked everyone which one they liked more. The vote was unanimously for the speechwriter’s over the candidate’s.

Stephan’s immediate reaction was explosive: “Who’s running? Bob or me?” he screamed.
Jack spoke first. “You’re trying to define yourself by negating Coakley. Listen to yourself: ‘Coakley moralizes. He’s a moralizing candidate. I am not. Coakley would govern with a cross over his heart and a bible over one eye, he’d govern blindly, religiously. I would not.’ OK, so we know what you’re not, but what we don’t know is what you are. Who are you? The best I can make of this speech is, ‘elect me because I’m not Taylor Coakley.’ Bob’s speech says a lot of things, and they add up to: ‘elect me because I am Stephan Breckenridge.’ Now you just need to adopt Bob’s language to your values.” He was angry, little rivulets of saliva around the corners of his curled mouth.

For a moment, Stephan, Jack, Bob, Fa, Lynn, and Eliot were silent. And then, almost simultaneously, everyone began to speak. Bob suddenly shouted, his voice rising above the rest, “Shut up! Listen!” He turned and said, “Look, Stephan.” He spoke in a more calm, measured voice than Jack did. “I think you’re getting in your head too much about all these things. You’re trying too hard to be non-controversial, please everybody, so you’re saying nothing. Whoever writes it, it has to come from you. It has to come from a place of trust. Trust yourself. Try and figure out what you really want to say, then we can help you say it the best it can be said, but it has to come from you. People know who you are, so you can speak with confidence.”

Stephan’s face took on an expression that could be called stoic, but an uninterested observer would notice the arc between his chin and body slowly lost degrees until his chin almost touched his neck. He kept his chin there for a minute at least, seeming to prefer eye contact with the strewn wrinkled sheets of yellow legal pads and dried out sesame bagels that were on the table. “OK,” he said to them, then he asked them all to go back to San Francisco and leave him alone in the house. He asked Jack to cancel all of his meetings for the rest of the week. He would stay there and finish the speech by himself.

Everyone looked at each other without looking at each other. Clearly, Bob had to ask the question.
“And what if you don’t finish it before Saturday?”

“I will,” Stephan replied. “But just in case, combine your draft with mine, and email it to me by Friday.”

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Want to keep reading? Here's Part 2!